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Saturday, May 24, 2014

Foster and the Gang of 8 Should Be Ashamed

Local resident Terry Jensen took up where I left off criticizing the proposed tear down and rebuild of City Hall and the Main Library -- not to mention the give away of the public parking structure and the vacant courthouse.

As reported in www.lbreport.com, (http://www.lbreport.com/14ops/jensen/jen14b.htm) the City has flatly refused to provide the documentation for all the assertions made in the memo which the Council relied upon when it decided to put the Civic Center out for bid. To date no one has provided documentation of where estimates of the costs to retrofit were obtained.

Not one city in California has torn down its City Hall due to seismic problems. Not one. They have all retro fitted their buildings.

No one in Long Beach can explain that if the building is so seismically unsafe, why is it still occupied. And no one has even discussed that a great portion of the "costs to run the Civic Center" are actually parking lot costs which are fully recovered and why if that is the case is the City planning on giving the parking lot to the developer.

Foster and the gang of eight council members that railroaded this looming fiasco through council should be ashamed. What an embarrassing action to take as Foster and five of the council leave office. And at a time when Foster and the same gang have refused to restore the Fire Engines taken out of several stations, they agreed to spend several million on consultants to put an RFP together and to reward firms responding, even if the City decides to cancel the plan for a new civic center.

All the documents need to be released. More importantly, this project needs to be stopped so no more funds are expended until an investigation is done about what really is going on and who will benefit if this project is approved.